Published 1 year ago
by
Sandy Schaefer
, Updated January 29th, 2014 at 1:36 pm,

There are a whole lot of major tentpoles arriving in 2015, but not all of them are installments in established franchises. Indeed, one of the more anticipated movies due to release that year is Disney’s Tomorrowland, a fantasy/sci-fi adventure from co-writer and director Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol) that’s been shrouded in mystery since screenwriter Damon Lindelof (Prometheus) was hired to get the ball rolling some 2-3 years ago (back when the project was called 1952).

Tomorrowland features George Clooney playing “a former boy-genius inventor jaded by disillusionment,” who has a chance to revitalize his hopes and dreams of the past when a “bright, optimistic teen” (Under the Dome‘s Britt Robertson) seeks him out to assist her in discovering the truth about the enigmatic “Tomorrowland” – a wondrous place that Clooney’s character knows all too well about, from his youth (that last bit is based on unconfirmed plot details, mind you).

This week, Clooney participated in an AMA (Ask me Anything) session on Reddit, where he addressed topics ranging from Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Golden Globes zinger about his dating habits (Clooney approves, but said he’s working to get them back) to his regret over having Bat-nipples in Batman & Robin. In order to conduct the AMA, Clooney had to take a break from shooting Tomorrowland, but he took a moment to tease the crazy nature of that filming process:

I’m on set and literally have a harness on right now. I was late, because right before I was hanging from about 30 feet over four different blue screens. So as we’re talking now there are all these wires and contraptions hanging off of me. It’s really, really, really good and Brad’s a wonderful director, and a wonderful guy with a wild imagination. And if I don’t screw it up it’ll be a terrific film. Everybody’s really good in it. Anyway, you always have to be careful what you say about these films so I don’t want to sort of ruin it by telling you that everyone dies in the end. Oops, I’ve said too much.

One suspects that Clooney has (to some degree) started getting used to having to act in a largely empty sound stage environment, between him having to swing around blue screens for Tomorrowland and floating around in “space” – as digitally-rendered in post-production – during filming on Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity. There’s not much reading between the lines to be done here, other than agreeing that Clooney’s tidbit only makes Bird’s film sound all the more “wild” and intriguing for it.

George Clooney and his ‘Monuments Men’

Next week, the WWII adventure The Monuments Men (which Clooney co-write, directed and stars in) opens in theaters, and Clooney briefly touched on that film, saying how shortly after he and writing/producing partner Grant Heslov made The Ides of March, the pair “looked back at the films we’d been doing, and it was nothing but cynical films. We’re really not cynical people, so we thought we should do one with a positive view of the world.”

That comment is worth noting, since Clooney has sometimes (and not without reason) been accused of making and/or starring in too many films that offer a jaded and/or ironic worldview and themes. Tomorrowland, by the sound of it, will keep Clooney moving in the same direction away from such material (following Monuments Men), seeing how Bird’s film appears to be about embracing creativity and imagination, while rejecting the exploitation of new discoveries for purely financial and/or power gain; that kind of wide-eyed positivity is all the more welcome, in our current pop culture landscape.